Is Matt Mullenweg defending WordPress or sabotaging it?
torment-nexus.mathewingram.com
torment-nexus.mathewingram.com
- Matt, under various guises, is shifting blame to different entities that are effectively himself.
- Automattic is Matt. Matt is the CEO of Automattic.
- The WordPress Foundation is, effectively, Matt.
- The problem is Matt. Maybe he's right about WP Engine, but the way he has and continues to handle everything has been disastrous.
This is the best single line distillation of the current lunacy. I mean with every passing day, it all becomes more and more unhinged, and I see no good outcome in the long term. The overall damage to the ecosystem I think begins it's death spiral now.
It's a boon for competitors I suppose, but that's about it.
ACF was one of the most important enterprise plugins in the ecosystem when they hijacked it. They essentially did a supply chain attack on the top WordPress users and expected there to be no repercussions.
He was also apparently upset that WP Engine was not pushing Jetpack, Automattic's own thoroughly mediocre service package that they try upselling to every WordPress user.
So I get the impression Matt is really, really, really out of touch with his own userbase, and he still sees the primary feature of WordPress as a blogging platform.
I think Matt probably has some idea of a "user base" for which he's "fighting the good fight". But it doesn't include _me_. Or any of the place IO work at's clients who're running WP for their website. Or the ACF plugin developers, or any of the other developers publishing themes or plugins on wordpress.org who must be thinking "WF actual F" about now.
As I commented elsewhere:
So far as I can tell, when Matt talks about "the WordPress Community", he means:
- Matt
- the people who didn't quit Automattic last week
- _maybe_ the WP core developers who don't work at Automattic, so long as they keep their criticisms to themselves
Ironically, ever since past data of "active installs" was removed from the plugin directory [1], Matt is, as sole owner of WordPress dot org [2], the only person in the world with unfettered access to plugin usage trends.
[1] https://meta.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/6511
[2] https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/4/24262232/matt-mullenweg-w...
Just deleted my Gravitar profile/account, which required me to delete my Wordpress.com account too.
Wordpress is an open source project. If he's "right" about WP Engine, then he's "right" about basically every user of every open source project, and there ceases to be any such thing. OS is take-it-or-leave-it, if he wants contributions back, put it in the licence and also offer support.
If you want compensation of any kind you must stipulate them before the fact.
He's actually engaged in rich-vs-rich corp warfare and playing the open source community like puppets on a string.
I am amused to see the usual HN vibe both complaining that commercial entities crowding out creators with their own software is violating the "spirit of open source," and insisting that FOSS maintainers don't owe you anything morph into commercial entities don't owe the FOSS maintainers of the software users anything, and are owed trademarks and access to infrastructure.
WP Engine is a hedge fund spinning money out of FOSS. It's fine, it makes more choices available for people. But the idea that Automattic has to acknowledge them, and that acknowledgement cannot be hostile, that's not in the license.
And is Automattic providing trademark, infrastructure and moral support to WP Engine? As far as I understand WP Engine is just a WordPress plugin.
There aren't that many when it comes to the usual wordpress "niche" aka "slap it on a 5$ VPS and be done with it". Virtually everything else has a muuuuch steeper learning curve, and you gotta be lucky to find third party integrations for more than the usual suspects (WP, Drupal, Joomla).
I would think so too, but it’s not guaranteed.
Everyone thought for sure that Twitter would die with what Elon Musk has been doing to it, but somehow it seems to still be alive.
Likewise, everyone thought there would be a total exodus of users from Reddit to Lemmy or Kbin. And while those platforms did get a lot of new users, it feels like it didn’t reach the level of significance of the Digg -> Reddit mass-migration.
Therefore I am not convinced that people will actually be leaving Wordpress in droves. No matter how bad the situation currently seems for WP users.
I am still at Reddit but many subreddits are just not the same.
As someone who worked years in the Wordpress space, I’m feeling the same about never touching it again which is a shame. I’ve enjoyed the projects, I’ve enjoyed contributing to the WP Stack Exchange and helping other people, and I’m done.
Mastodon's been a largely acceptable replacement.
1: https://techcrunch.com/2024/02/22/tumblr-ceo-publicly-spars-...
While I think Matt's current behaviour is abhorrent, my understanding is the linked article buries the lede a bit.
The user claimed they were banned due to bigotry and that Tumblr was lying about them having NSFW content. Things continued to escalate until Matt shared a list of their NSFW accounts.
Was this confirmed by Tumblr staff?
And if the accounts were empty then what's the harm?
> ...was just meant to smear them as a sex-pervert.
The user voluntarily made several accounts with extremely vulgar and sexual names, ostensibly for NSFW purposes. If merely sharing the names is enough to "smear them as a sex pervert", I don't think that's Matt's fault.
Especially considering the post was in response to the user inciting harassment against Tumblr staff.
There's plenty of reasons to dislike Matt without stirring up petty drama that's exaggerated or misleading.
Whether he's "right" or "wrong", this is a list of Adderall side effects that seem to match Mullenweg's behavior:
* Increased Sociability: More outgoing and talkative.
* Risk-Taking Behavior: Engaging in impulsive or risky actions.
* Reduced Inhibition: Less self-consciousness, more expressive.
* Improved Confidence: Greater willingness to take on challenges.
* Euphoria: Feelings of happiness and pleasure.
* Potential for Overindulgence: Risky behaviors may increase.
Thing is, Adderall is an amphetamine, and there’s a more likely culprit for those with lots of money: cocaine.
As forseen by silicon valley
Right. At the very start of this I was automatically on wordPress' side because yeah, kick back if you make a mint off free code. It's the morally correct thing to do.
The rest is just.. wtf. I hope I never mullenweg a project this badly.
"I hope I never mullenweg a project this badly."
That is the only good thing I've seen come out of this whole debacle. This needs to become standard tech/OSS lexicon, and Matt's enduring legacy.
What's really telling is ~9 of Automattic's 46 own investments were inside the WordPress ecosystem, vs. 100% of WP Engine's. Things like Beeper for $124M in April of 2024 just seem awkward in light of the recent complaints about WP Engine not doing enough.
Jason Cohen understood the tradeoffs of using private equity versus bootstrapping. He goes into the decision in more depth elsewhere, but at 44s into this video about avoiding private equity he alludes to his decision:
I admit, this is pretty far-fetched, and I don't even believe it, but I'd say the same thing about the whole affair
For your second question, Matt claims that it's partly because WP engine disabled core features of WordPress. I can imagine a world where you are inundated with complaints that your software doesn't do X basic thing (because the top provider has disabled it) but ITS BEEN THERE THIS WHOLE FUCKING TIME TIME STOP COMPLAINING (put a smile on and explain calmly). You get my point. And then you snap.
No idea if that's what is in his mind but I have some sympathy for Matt. In principle. (This is me steelmanning Matt)
All WP Engine did is add:
define( 'WP_POST_REVISIONS', false );
to their configs.
Why would anyone using open source software be required to use 100% of the functionality that the software is capable of providing?
This is like asking what is it a concern of McDonald's if you open up your own restaurant call McDonald in your town and make it a dump
It wasn’t “we really wish you wouldn’t”.
> The abbreviation “WP” is not covered by the WordPress trademarks and you are free to use it in any way you see fit.
It was changed to its current spiteful text on September 25.
http://web.archive.org/web/20240919043912/https://wordpressf...
What's not clear is if they did anything wrong to deserve it.
Heck even Jetpack, Automattics official plugin, recommends limiting revisions: https://jetpack.com/blog/wordpress-revisions/
Lastly, Wpengine never fully disabled post revisions, they just limited it to 2-3.
Not quite. https://wpengine.com/support/platform-settings/#Post_Revisio...
"Every WP Engine site has WordPress revisions disabled by default... Revisions can only be enabled by contacting Support... Support can help you enable 3 revisions for your posts to start. Revisions should not exceed 5."
Or WP Engine customers don't understand and are coming to Automattic for this? Well you can answer to refer to the WP Engine docs? You don't have to give them support if they're not your customer.
If you built your business next to mine, and I shared e.g. my water infrastructure with you for free or for a nominal fee, then one day your business got large enough to threaten my business, am I obligated to let you keep using my water, or should you have figured something else out long ago?
Seems totally fair, right? WordPress is 100% reliant on PHP and getting updates, new features, and security fixes for free, none of which the PHP project is obligated to provide?
Surely Automattic, a company valued at over 7 billion with annual revenues of over 700mil is happily paying Rasmus 50 odd million a year?
No? Why not? Are the rules different for WPEngine and Silver Lake compared to Automattic and Blackrock/Alta Park?
And, you know what? You can't run Wordpress without Linux, Windows, macOS, and maybe a few *BSD operating systems to run it on. I guess Matt's owes Linus and Bill and Tim, and a bunch of BSD project leads another $50mil.
You did so, but turns out that other people are way better at utilizing that knowledge than you are. You throw a hissy fit on the internet. Everybody turns against you, even people who think that in essence you're right.
If somebody doesn't fork WordPress soon, it will be decades before WordPress is purged from the web and in the meantime a lot of those remaining sites will devolve into bot-net members and malware hosts.
Because that's how Mullenwegs crusade is going to end: With the death of WordPress.
> you can just continue to use WordPress without any impact
That's nice—
> on any other host than WP Engine
That's the whole point, Matt.
WordPress is itself a fork of a previous open-source GPL license. Meaning Mullenweg couldn't make it close source even if he wanted to.
He makes it pretty clear that he thinks all of WordPress should belong to him. So he's intentionally closing out the ecosystem by making it as hostile to third-parties as possible.
As some like to say, "the cruelty is the point".
There is much more to be made for him scorching the earth and either directing them to his company or taking a cut of competitors. I guess the logic is who cares if the overall system suffers as long as he has the biggest piece of the pie.
At the end of the day having half of the web running their platform is a nice idea, but having even 5% of that exclusively on Wordpress.com, or Wordpress VIP is way better for the wallet.
No one with money at stake will allow their Wordpress install to be subject to random sabotage by the whims of unhinged behavior. I don't know if a fork is the solution, but Matt can't have admin access to so many installs.
You can make a business that supports an open source product by providing hosting or services, but you cannot expect to be the largest provider or to make the most money off of it because you're giving away much of your labor for free.
This is all well and good if you're a company whose mission is simply to ensure that the software survives—in that case your business exists precisely to enable you to give away free labor—but we run into issues when companies want to become large and profitable and pay off investors.
That's why AWS's hosting is a problem. If you look at each database who's done it it's never about sustainability for the project, it's always that the for profit entity isn't profitable enough.
This looks more like Amazon copying products from successful sellers on its marketplace, then pushing them to the side.
If he is just suing that company, it's really about himself and his interests. He is right to notice the moral incongruence but he can't expect other people to support him in his personal quest to get justice just for himself.
What he sees as gross abuse is just day-to-day reality for the vast majority of open source developers. Many of whom struggle to get by and struggle to find jobs.
Companies which refuse to even extend OSS devs a job interview are making out like bandits on top of their work while simultaneously using VC funds to raise entry barriers and ad costs so that the OSS devs cannot even compete in their own industry which they contributed to. The typical skilled OSS dev ends up with no jobs, no funding, no opportunities.
OSS devs can't even afford legal representation so legal precedents are meaningless to them.
Or do you mean that any OSS dev is giving charity to people making money using that software?
It doesn’t matter what he thinks he’s doing (my belief is that he’s just frustrated that someone else is profiting more than he thinks is “fair” and is using everything else as a cover, but maybe he does actually believe WPE is causing harm).
But here’s the problem I have with the whole position he’s taken. If this were actually about “Wordpress the project/community” the payment would be to the non profit not his personal for-profit company. If it was about trademarks, he should not have made the prior claims that the trademarks were not the property of his for profit when they functionally are. He would have not misrepresented the non profit as an independent entity (a fiction demonstrated clearly by the requirement to compensate his for profit).
if WPEngine is not contributing a “fair” amount to an open source project that sucks, but that’s always a risk if you want to build a for profit business on an OSS basis. But you can’t then unilaterally and retroactively change the rules later on, and act like it’s a “protecting the community” nonsense. You sure as shit don’t get to just engage in explicit extortion.[1]
Again, maybe wpengine was not contributing a fair share back to “the community”, but that’s just how OSS works, not everyone is a contributor.
[1] something I’ve found myself wondering about: my understanding is that under the law a contract signed under duress is not valid. Given the threats Matt was making, if WPE had signed it, would they be able to then go to court and say it was not enforceable due to the threat being leveled at them?
But then I regained my senses... I don't have any kind of reputation or extensive proof of accomplishments or character outside of my resume and real-life social circle. Any company that would cold-contact someone like me is 100% dealing with either abnormally low offer acceptance or abnormally high employee turnover, or both. I also remember reading (on Reddit and such) from previous employees that the CEO was best described as "mercurial."
There were enough bright waving red flags that I did not bother to respond.
In my experience that’s how recruiters work and the only thing it indicates is that the company has open roles to fill.
> Write a thoughtful cover letter, and thorough responses to application questions.
I've seen these kind of application questions before. These are not from Automattic but comparable to what I saw from them: "Describe in detail, including the metrics, KPIs and reasoning you used when you launched your previous 0 to 1 product to ensure a good fit to your customer", "Describe in detail the biggest challenge and obstacles you've overcome getting a product to market, including both the technical aspects and business/people components, and be specific about the role you played in making sure these were surmountable" and so on.
> a Slack interview
This is actually novel and kinda cool, especially when it's one of the primary ways you might communicate day-to-day.
> 30-60 minutes Zoom interview
> Code Test for engineers - We expect the code test will take no more than a couple of days, and this is done asynchronously over the course of approximately a week
That's starting to add up.
> Trial "can last anywhere from a few hours to a few weeks. Most candidates complete the trial while working full-time and we know life is busy"
Better check your existing employment contract about moonlighting / outside employment (I am not saying I agree with such restrictions, but given how common they are, maybe this should be called out a little more....)
The initial interviews went well, so I moved on to the code test. It was a slog; I was working full-time and raising a three-year-old. But I loved the idea of working for the keepers of WordPress, so I powered through. During this process I got a peek inside Automattic, and there were some concerning oddities. One that stuck out to me was that there is an annual week-long gathering of employees, and it is mandatory.
Then my "trial" began. It was certainly within my technical capabilities, but it was something like 2 weeks worth of full-time work, all to write code that would ultimately be thrown away. I was instructed to invoice Automattic $30/hour for the time I spent on it, and told that taking too long to finish would result in rejection. I got a few hours in before I concluded that it was just not possible, and I withdrew my application.
There was also a fair amount of weird forced corporate jargon in the materials. Instead of "employees" it was always "Automatticians," and things like that. It felt a bit cultish. In retrospect, I think I dodged a bullet.
Doesn't that run foul of minimum wage laws and social security laws? At that point you're doing unpaid work.
That said, I did just peek and my notes and I read that candidates are paid two week's salary for the coding assignment.
I think their code test / interview process sounds terrible, but the two days of code test is part of the interview, it's not producing code for the company to use.
(I do think that any company that wants applicants to spend that much time should pay for that time, but only for ethical, not legal, reasons.)
"Required: 10 years of experience in X"
"Sorry, Joe, while your cover letter told a good story of how you created X 5 years ago, we are looking for people with more experience in X. Good luck on your search!"
But can also be because your name was put in the hat by someone at the company (either because they know you, or because they saw something you said online).
(Not that the previous model was foolproof, but they were usually a lot easier to get rid of when they went rogue; for instance see Léo Apotheker.)
But, obviously, this is currently looking like a disaster of PR and community.
So, hopefully they can figure out:
* solutions to the open source sustainability challenges,
* a solution to the harm done by recent mistakes, and
* how to try to prevent mistakes like that from happening again.
Matt responds: > WP Engine is a “competitor”, but so is every other web host in the world. Automattic and WordPress.org have had good relations with all the others for 21 years. WordPress.org recommends a number of hosts.
It seems Matt is forgetting his "friendly" spat with GoDaddy a few years ago.
Matt continues: > His criticism of certain practices focuses on maintaining the platform’s integrity and open-source commitment to ensure the community can grow further with sustainable investments.
Let's assume this is all true. It doesn't change the fact that he's attacking a direct competitor.
Matt continues: > Silver Lake is far wealthier than Matt or Automattic.
This is how you know that Matt wrote the response. It's the same ego defending behavior that he used when responding to DHH.
Matt is very, very bad at PR. It's really time he learns that and lets others take over those roles. And it's time he learns to shut up. He hurts more than he helps.
It's worth pointing out that, of the hosts Wordpress.org just promoted (https://wordpress.org/news/2024/10/wp-engine-promotions/) 3 are owned by Automattic and the other 2 pay Automattic licensing/service fees.
The "volunteers" on the WP project that approve all of the work and revisions are full time Automattic employees. The work that the Foundation does primarily benefits Automattic.
There is nothing to even support besides Automattic.
The money goes to the company that employs the people that work on WP... soooo, the better Automattic does, the better it is for WP.
Maybe its a newfound persona, maybe its a new marketing angle, or maybe its just someone going a little unhinged. But all isn’t right in the WordPress world
ElonM Has Entered the Chat
< Removed the Link, because it can be interpreted as political. I was talking about his statement, which was simply puerile. >
I think he's right about the movement, right about better monetization for open source, right about the trademark issues, and while rude, his comments are harsh truths about DHH and his work in OSS.
Obviously, they way he's handled everything has been bad - very valid to ask why he didn't act sooner about the trademark issue. And, snide comments about DHH not donating enough to charity are irrelevant. But he is right about a the core issues.
> DHH claims to be an expert on open source, but his toxic personality and inability to scale teams means that although he has invented about half a trillion dollars worth of good ideas, most of the value has been captured by others.
And this?
> Rails, finally some open source! Looks like ~943k lines of code, 143k from Basecamp org. Automattic publishes 6.58M lines of open source code, 6.9x more than you. Yet, we’re “doing open source dirty”? Shopify used Rails to build a $7B/revenue and growing business, why didn’t you?
And this?
> 37signals inspired tons of what Automattic does! We’re now half a billion in revenue. Why are you still so small?
Matt isn't talking about sustainability for open source—no one could accuse Rails of being unsustainable—he's talking about open source as a vehicle for developing personal wealth.
If at this point you think Matt is motivated by anything other than greed, you haven't been reading enough of what he's writing. The trademark thing and "sustainability" is a very thin veneer on top of a man who thinks $400 million net worth is still too little.
He made his point poorly, but ultimately it's about OSS projects making more money and not running on people's generosity until they get burnt out because they have to do the OSS work and their real job to pay the bills. That it's a single maintainer or a group of people that get rich is irrelevant, to the real issue and only got brough up because Matt was trying to be insulting, which as I said, was wrong.
> If at this point you think Matt is motivated by anything other than greed, you haven't been reading enough of what he's writing.
I think this is an instance of, in some aspects and theoretically, doing the right thing for the wrong reasons.
You can't tell me with a straight face that this line is talking about paying the bills? "Most of the value has been captured by others"?
The man thinks about open source in terms of value captured rather than value contributed. He seriously thinks that success in open source is measured by the market cap of the attached for profit.
This is as transparent a window into Matt's psyche as I hope we'll ever get, and if you're still buying his lies after reading this I don't know what else to tell you.
I am no fan of DHH but I do not see any harsh truths.
An alternative one would be that DHH had ideas and works that could've been much more successful that would let him hire people that would further the goals of OSS. That he could have had companies with corporate values that are more distinct from companies whose goals are purely to extract value for their shareholders.
Why don't you read up and form your own opinion? It is just like 15-30 minutes of research.
>My opinion is both parties are in the wrong...
So you feel which way, now?
Automattic has the right to cut off use of its trademarks and infrastructure for any reason, and the hedge fund has the right to whine about it because they got used to the generosity.
As far as I know WP Engine has not tried to call up a mob. The mob was entierly Matt's own creation. So you agree that he is the one in the wrong?